Gendered legacies of Communist Albania: a paradox of progress

Hoxha's regime used the language of ‘ending conservative traditions’ to justify many of its horrors, but
today Albania wrestles with a complex heritage of traditional patriarchy
intertwined with modern authoritarianism.

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Albania’s communist past
is inescapably dark in character – perhaps more so than most other post-communist
nations. Albania’s cultish dictator of forty years, Enver Hoxha, manufactured
a state of unrelenting civil oppression, extreme
media and personal censorship, absolute isolation, and social mistrust and
paranoia. The remnants of 750,000 communist-era
concrete bunkers across Albania, awaiting an enemy that never
came, are a stark manifestation of Hoxha’s paranoid, all-enveloping policymaking.

Twenty percent of the population
was a victim of long internal exiles, religious persecutions, and forced-labor
camps – targeting “enemies of the people,” such as landowners, disloyal party
officials, religious clerics, and clan leaders. The Hoxha era is further darkened
by the political murders and purges of over six thousand people.

But amidst such
unrelenting horrors, there were also flickers of progress. Hoxha inherited a semi-feudal
country stuck in time, defined by its clanship ties, outdated means of
production, a general absence of education, and extreme social conservatism.
Through Soviet-style industrialization plans and aided
by Stalinist propaganda campaigns, Hoxha diversified the economy and
established national autarky, significantly improved standards of healthcare
and education – eliminating rampant illiteracy – and minimized (often through
violence) clan and religious loyalties that had previously divided his citizens’
identities.

Talking to my parents –
who lived through Hoxha’s communist nightmare, hiding their radios as they
played forbidden Italian music and fearing with every spoken word – ambivalent
judgments abound. Hoxha was bad – really bad – but part of his legacy may
secretly be seen as good even in the minds of the most terrified citizens. As
my mother and a large number of my relatives concur, Hoxha’s most
transformative and paradoxical campaign may be his “emancipation of women.”

Hoxha’s words left no room
for doubt as to his aspirations in this dimension: "The Party and the
whole country should rise to their feet, burn the backward canons and crush
anyone who would dare trample on the sacred law of the Party on the protection
of the rights of women and young girls."But passionate words don’t often translate well
into practice.

Hoxha:
The emancipator of women?

In terms of political
repression during communism, women were equal victims alongside the men –
although their experiences as political prisoners remain
silenced due to stigma linked to the protection of family honor. But with its
focus on universal labor and theoretically egalitarian structures, communism
brought about a swift social revolution for Albanian women, who had long been relegated
to the domestic sphere of childrearing and arduous unpaid labor in the home and
fields. Education for women was previously unheard of, while early forced
marriages and the sale of young girls for betrothals were the norm.

Albanian women had
little formal say in decisions regarding their children’s lives and were
separated from the men and isolated in all spheres of social conduct, including
the home, church and mosque, and any public celebrations. After hundreds of
years of such pervasive structures of
exclusion, the Hoxha era flung open the doors of schools,
universities, and all workplaces for Albania’s women. In addition to public
sphere benefits, some oppressive private practices, such as arranged marriages
between unwilling young women and older men, were outlawed.

Skanderberg Square, Tirana, Albania. Photo: Les Haines via Flickr.In fact, women’s economic liberation became a core
government policy, enforced by frequent “congresses” held by the
Women’s Union. In particular, Hoxha was very interested in elevating the confidence and
self-esteem of his female comrades both in the workplace and within the family
– encouraging them to speak up amongst their male counterparts. Consequently, dual-earner
households became the default standard across the nation. Women were encouraged
to work for gender-equal wages within the
most male-dominated of sectors, such as the sciences, architecture, and politics,
and they even partook in the armed forces.

Alongside a system of
full employment and training for women on the basis of gender equality, the
Albanian socialist state also implemented quotas for the
political representation of women. About 33 percent of the
party's active members in 1988 were women, as well as over 40 percent of those
elected to the people's councils. Furthermore, nearly one-half of the
country's students were women. Statistics also show that women comprised
47 percent of the workforce. These structures were immensely progressive for
their time and assured that women directly contributed to national welfare at
the macro-level.

Such improvements were,
unfortunately, unevenly distributed, as Hoxha was keenly
aware of. The geographic division between the
Northern Ghegs, influenced by tribal and feudal traditions, and the more
progressive Southern Tosks of Albania has long characterized and continues to
define patterns of gender relations in the country. The rural Gheg people held strong
to traditional societal dynamics, as found in the illegal Albanian ancient code
of ethics, the Kanun.

But
even so, some of Hoxha’s policies, including his extensive literacy campaigns, reached
into the most remote of villages, bolstering the national literacy rate to more
than 90 percent by the late 1980s. This transformation disproportionately
benefitted women (formerly at 90 percent illiteracy) and
provided previously non-existent educational opportunities.

Cultural stagnation amidst structural progress

But even as institutions
and laws became more and more conducive to Albanian women’s social
emancipation, cultural values did not. While all citizens were equal in theory,
and while many structures were designed to elevate the status of women, implicit
gender norms continued to guide expectations for Albanian citizens. This
pattern was particularly strong in the rural north, which stood as relatively
immune to persistent campaigns for gender equality.

Hoxha’s Marxist-Leninist
policies of emancipation failed to alter traditional norms as they limited their
scope to women’s role outside of the home. The Communist Party waged
educational campaigns to support the equal sharing of household labor and even
encoded this within the Code of the Family in 1982 –
but social attitudes stagnated.

Although women entered
educational institutions and paid employment en masse, they continued to
experience a monopoly on the burdens
of unpaid labor and childcare. In other words, women were
expected to work full-time both inside and outside the home, without any concurrent
cultural changes in the role of men inside the home. In comparison, many other
nations at this time delegated women only to household labor or to a more
flexible combination of unpaid and part-time paid work.

Statue of the Unknown Partisan, Tirana, Albania. Photo: SarahTz via Flickr.The culture of
patriarchy remained unchallenged in private, with women still deferring to men
and silently suffering from normalized domestic violence. Furthermore,
women’s interactions with men remained stunted outside of the workplace, with
extreme stigma placed upon women who merely interacted with male friends outside
of work. One may argue that Hoxha’s campaigns of emancipation served to
increase Albanian women’s labor burdens without truly bolstering the women’s
social value in the eyes of male counterparts.

Adding to the burdens,
Hoxha’s policies limited women’s reproductive choices by prescribing
dramatic increases in the national population, coercing women to have and care
for more children as they
continued their paid labor responsibilities. In turn, access to abortions was deemed
illegal and contraceptives were available only by prescription. As a result,
population growth in Albania during the late 1980s was at 2.3 percent, the highest
in Europe.

The implementation of
extensive maternity leave and day-care facilities, even in workplace, were the
sole reactionary benefits of such policies. Finally, this focus on family
policies also placed restrictions and severe social stigmas on divorce, typically allowed
only in cases of adultery.

In one way, the Hoxha
era made great leaps in the status of women. But in another, it made women
prisoners to both their family patriarchs and the socialist labor force, taking
away their right to choose in either case and offering them little social support
in return. Unfortunately, no amount of educational campaigns convinced the
majority of Albanian men to lift a finger in the unpaid care of the household.

In a less condemning
interpretation, Albanian women under the rule of Hoxha may have felt free and
equal when at work, but confined and overwhelmed when at home – hence the
paradox. This reality was, of course, far away from Hoxha’s original
expectations of emancipation, but the absolute linkage of gender equality to
communist doctrines, not to fundamental re-conceptions of human rights and
social roles, inherently limited the efficacy and range of social progress in
communist Albania.

Post-Communist challenges

Perhaps serving as a
testament to the endurance of culture, neither a communist nor democratic
revolution has been able to rid Albanian women of their double burdens and
limitations in society. Hoxha’s legacy continues today even as Albanian women
and their organizations are at the forefront of social
change and laws in support of all dimensions of equality. Women
still have access to education and labor opportunities, with Albanian women now
possessing more years of education
on average than their male counterparts. But these women receive
lower wages on average,
and they suffer almost all of the burdens of unpaid household labor, alongside internalized
domestic violence and subservient family standing.

While many other European societies have made
some progress in redefining household and childcare labor as a gender-neutral
task, Albanian society has made no significant strides over the decades.

The democratic
transition, alongside free market policies, has worsened the conditions of some
Albanian women, especially those in rural communities who are returning to more
traditional ways of life. For one, the number of women deputies in parliament fell from 75 in the last communist
parliament to 9 after Albania’s first democratic elections.

Moreover, the mass closure
of state institutions and bureaucracies produced relatively high levels of female unemployment, increasing
financial dependence on male relatives or husbands. The end of communism also
spelled the end of strong social support structures related to childcare. Consequently, a greater proportion of
women now stay at home relative to communist times, leading to
higher isolation and exclusion from the
labor market.

Also troubling, the
opening of Albania to the world catalyzed a spike in human trafficking – re-labeling
women as property. Approximately 100,000 women and girls
were trafficked to the West against their will for prostitution and other
purposes between 1990 and 1999. This feeds into the more general trend evident
in Albania’s transition – an increase in social disorder and insecurity,
largely absent during rigid communist times.

These insecurities are magnifying
the need to “protect” women, by monitoring their movements, social behavior,
and interactions with others. In sum, democracy hasn’t eradicated the cultural
norms preserved during communism, and in some cases, it has invigorated
reactionary, neo-patriarchal attitudes in the populace.

Failure
to fundamentally emancipate

The Hoxha era may have
destroyed some structures of patriarchy, but it preserved to this day a culture
of implicit female subservience. These silent norms are faster to show
themselves as government policies of universal female employment become mere
historical relics. Without directly addressing women’s role in the family and
her status outside of Marxist structures, communist Albania never fully
fulfilled its promise of emancipation. A lesson learned for future generations
– cultures of patriarchy must be explicitly weakened for women to prosper as
equals within any nation. Institutions and elite campaigns can only go so far
amidst strong opposing normative expectations. In time, even new and
progressive institutions may begin to reflect old norms.

Albania’s transition to
democracy has opened pathways for women to challenge these norms and attitudes,
but at the same time, it has eroded structures of social protection afforded to
women under communist rule. Albanian men and women must find a way to balance
the economic ferocity and freedom of capitalist democracy with a strong system
of social protection – one that builds upon, not undermines, the small steps
made under communism.

Thus, as an Albanian,
American, and global woman, I continue my quest alongside thousands of other
individuals and NGOs to expose
and slowly demolish harmful norms that lie underneath the surface of all social
interactions, not limited to political systems and ideologies. Let’s not forget that the dynamics found
within communist and democratic Albania perpetuate themselves across most
modern societies, albeit to varying degrees.

As I was finishing up
this article along with my mandatory cup of Albanian mountain tea, I casually asked
my visiting mother’s opinion on which system was most beneficial to women –
Albanian communism or democracy? “I don’t know,” she responded, “but I’m very
happy that you girls [in reference to my sister and I] don’t live in either
communist or ‘democratic’ Albania anymore.” For someone who aspires to someday
return to her motherland for the long haul, such a response echoed the urgency
of reforms in contemporary Albania – keeping in mind history’s successes and
failures.

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